Hindsight is a really cruel trick. It most certainly isn’t fair to be able to know how a situation ends and be able to review each and every choice you made, seeing where you went right or wrong. Riccio plays with this in her novel “Again, But Better” through Shane and Pilot.
Shane is a pre-med college girl who creates her own destiny and heads off on a semester abroad to London to study creative writing and intern at a travel magazine. She lives with a few flatmates who all bond and become a group. Shane spends some time awkwardly flirting with Pilot, who seems to be just as interested, and flirts right back… until his girlfriend Amy shows up. Amy, who had never gotten Pilot’s message breaking things off, and doesn’t know that they haven’t been together.
Drama ensues. Chaos reigns, and a twenty-something girl flies home to America with crushed dreams, a broken heart, and irreconcilable differences with her family. She spends the next few years following the life plan that was set out for her before London, before she fell in love with Pilot, and left her dreams across the sea. Finally, when we circle back with Shane in the latter half of the book, we learn that her boyfriend has proposed to her and she is currently interviewing for residencies in NYC. Circumstance has lead her to the same city that Pilot currently lives in, and before she can change her mind she confronts him about their potential. They both mention that they wish they could go back in time and do things over, and fate steps in.
There are absolutely some things that I would go back and re-do if given the chance. I would do high school over, as much as that sounds painful for some, but I certainly didn’t live up to my fullest potential there, and I could have gone to some much better colleges. I would redo some relationships where I swore I was in love. :: insert eye roll here:: I would have applied for jobs and internships in a different career field than the one I am currently in now so that maybe by the time I reached 34 I would be in a little bit of a better spot.
Unfortunately, hindsight is 20/20 - and 2020 doesn’t give anything for free.
